Wastewater pollutants are typically classified as either organic pollutants or inorganic pollutants. Organic pollutants generally refer to those substances that contain carbon and can be burned. Organic pollutants are often removed by biological wastewater treatment, that is, by cultivating bacteria to convert most of the organic pollutants in the wastewater to carbon dioxide, water, and biomass. Any biomass produced in the process is then separated from the treated wastewater and disposed of by various means, such as landfilling, incineration or application to topsoil as fertilizer. There also exists a class of organic pollutants which are refractory, that is, slow or difficult to biodegrade. Some well-known examples include plastics and hair.
Inorganic pollutants are generally not biologically degradable. Inorganic pollutants are often referred to as minerals. Some well-known examples include clays, grit and sand. In a conventional wastewater treatment plant, inorganic pollutants must be removed from the plant, or they will accumulate in the processing tanks, diminishing the actual volume within the tanks available for biological treatment. For the purposes of this disclosure, inorganic pollutants and refractory organic pollutants will be referred to as “inert solids.” Biologically degradable organic pollutants will be referred to as “readily degradable solids.”
A conventional activated sludge wastewater treatment process is shown in FIG. 1. The process generally involves cultivating within an aeration reactor a “mixed liquor” of bacterial cells suspended in wastewater. The bacterial cells are only slightly denser than water, and so are easily maintained in suspension. Solid-liquid separators, such as large quiescent clarifiers or membrane-based systems, are typically used to separate the cultivated mixed liquor into bacterial cell mass, referred to as activated sludge, and a clear effluent. The clear effluent may be removed from the waste stream and discharged into a local waterway. At least a portion of the activated sludge may be recycled to the aeration reactor as return activated sludge (RAS). The RAS helps maintain a sufficient concentration of bacterial cells in the aeration reactor for effective cleaning of the incoming wastewater. Since conversion of the readily degradable solids creates additional bacterial cell mass within the wastewater treatment system, a portion of the activated sludge is typically removed from the plant as waste activated sludge (WAS) to maintain the bacterial cell mass within an acceptable performance range.
In general, the proportion of inert solids to readily degradable solids in WAS is similar to that in the mixed liquor in the aeration reactor. In a traditional activated sludge plant, the WAS flow rate is high enough that the concentration of inert solids accumulated within the wastewater treatment plant is relatively low. However, newer processes have been designed that minimize the production of biosludge. These low-yield (low-biosludge-production) wastewater treatment processes significantly reduce WAS, limiting the rate at which inert solids are removed from a plant. Since WAS has typically been the only pathway by which inert solids are removed from a wastewater treatment plant, it follows that inert solids will accumulate within a low-yield wastewater treatment plant unless the inert solids are removed by some other means.